Application Visibility & Control Developer Center

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Cisco® Application Visibility and Control (AVC) is a solution that uses multiple technologies of the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers and Cisco Integrated Service Routers Generation 2 (ISR G2), and network management tools which together provide powerful and pervasive integrated solution for discovering, monitoring as well as controlling applications.

2. How does Cisco® AVC work?

AVC works by enabling the software features within the Cisco ASR 1000 and Cisco ISR G2 in conjunction with network management tools to perform the following functions:

Performance monitoring - Utilizes embedded monitoring capabilities within the routers to extract and collect application usage, performance metrics, aggregate and export this information using open export format such as Netflow Version 9 and IPFIX for network management

Network Management – Enables Cisco and 3rd party network management tools to provide visualization of network application bandwidth usage and performance to end users, as well as to provide feedback and implement policy to network devices to fine tune performance

Control - Controls per-application bandwidth usage and intelligently selects the path to deliver application data based on real time performance

3. What technology is used in Cisco® AVC solution?

Cisco® AVC consists of the following technologies:

Next-generation DPI technology called NBAR2, which can identify more than 1000 applications and support application categorization, with the ability to perform in-service update of application signatures.

Performance collection engine to collect Application Response Time (ART) for TCP applications, and Media Monitoring (MMON) to collect voice and video performance such as jitter and loss. All the information is exported through the Flexible Netflow infrastructure.

Reporting and management tools, such as Cisco Prime™ Infrastructure with Assurance module which is an enterprise-grade infrastructure management and service monitoring tool for reporting of application and network performance; and Cisco Insight which can provide up to 30 different reports for application visibility.

QoS to facilitate optimization and control of application performance.

No, starting with IOS XE release 3.4S the FPI license (FLASR1-FPI-RTU) has been obsoleted by AVC license (FLASR1-AVC-RTU). There is an upgrade license (FLASR1-AVC-UPG) to upgrade your FPI license to AVC.

6. Do I need AVC if I just want to use NBAR2 and QoS?

Yes, both NBAR2 and QoS are components of AVC and provide per-application bandwidth control.

Features and Functionalities

1. How many applications does AVC recognize?

AVC, through NBAR2 technology, currently recognizes more than one thousand applications including but not limited to web and enterprise applications, cloud services, voice and video, email, file sharing, gaming and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications.

No, NBAR2 provides application signature updates through the NBAR2 Protocol Pack. The software releases that support loading of the NBAR2 Protocol Pack begin at IOS XE 3.7S and IOS 15.2(4)M2.

4. How do I control applications bandwidth with AVC?

NBAR2 and QoS on the Cisco ASR 1000 and ISR G2 routers are the main mechanism for application control in AVC. With AVC, the QoS class-map has been enhanced to match the application name and attributes such as category as sub-category which are recognized by NBAR2. These added matching capabilities can also work in conjunction with all other match criteria already supported by QoS class-map such as ACL or DSCP. QoS actions such as shape, police or priority can then be applied to the application traffic.

5. How easy is it for a customer to use AVC to control P2P traffic?

AVC identifies more than 1000 applications, several among these being P2P applications. In addition, AVC has a special category for P2P applications that customers can use in their QoS policies to filter or rate limit P2P traffic. The following example shows how to identify and limit P2P applications.

class-map match-any p2p-app

match protocol dht

match protocol attribute sub-category p2p-file-transfer

policy-map control-policy

class p2p-app

police 8000 conform-action transmit exceed-action drop

6. What control option do I have for my applications?

There are two types of controls in AVC

Bandwidth Control - Through NBAR2 and QoS, users can choose to drop, limit, guarantee bandwidth or mark application traffic flow

On the Cisco ASR 1000 AVC can also collect and export information per VRF.

9. What is the Cisco IOS Performance Agent (PA)? How is it relevant to Cisco AVC?

IOS Performance Agent (PA) is one of the software features used in Cisco AVC. It collects and exports the Application Response Time (ART) such as Network Delay, Response Time and Transaction Time for TCP applications. Network administrators can use this information to better understand application performance and bottlenecks in the network.

Network Management

1. What network management tools support Cisco AVC?

AVC exports information using open export formats such as Netflow Version 9 and IPFIX. This standard format allows Cisco and 3rd party network management applications to support Cisco AVC. Cisco Prime Infrastructure supports Cisco AVC. In addition, there are already Cisco Developer Network (CDN) partners such as ActionPacked, InfoVista, LivingObjects and Plixer, who support Cisco AVC.